The Lanimer Bride Read online

  ‘I suppose.’

  He captured her hand and began to nibble at her fingers.

  ‘Either you stop doing that, or we begin again,’ he said round them. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I noticed that.’ She freed the hand, which returned to its previous occupation. He chuckled, and flung his arm across her shoulders again.

  ‘I meant what I said.’

  ‘I know.’

  Chapter Three

  Following Alys down the stairs in the morning Gil was relieved, though unsurprised, to find his brother-in-law Michael Douglas standing in the hall, eating porridge and toasted bread and discussing suppliers of materia medica with Lady Egidia.

  ‘If Andro Bothwell’s shop was still there,’ she was saying, ‘it would be simpler by far. Good morning, my dear,’ she said as Alys came to kiss her. ‘Did you tell me Andro’s son was set up in Glasgow, Gil?’

  ‘And his daughter, both.’ Gil bowed to his mother, acknowledged his dog’s welcome, then accepted a dish of porridge from Alan Forrest, and added butter with a generous hand. ‘You could send to either for what you need, or send to Alys and she’d see to it for you. Aye, Michael.’

  ‘Aye, Gil.’ Michael, compact and well-barbered, as much at ease as any man in Lady Egidia’s presence, set his empty porringer on the tray at the steward’s elbow. Socrates’ disappointed gaze followed it, and his long nose twitched. ‘What’s this I hear,’ Michael began, and paused because Alys was enquiring, with resolute concern, for his wife. Dealing efficiently with this, he went on, ‘What’s this I hear about the lassie Madur? Madam our mother sent for me,’ he bowed slightly to Lady Egidia, ‘but she bade me wait till you explained what it’s about.’

  ‘Indeed, it is very distressing,’ said Alys.

  ‘She’s missing. It seems she’s been lifted away by force.’ Gil outlined the situation briefly, aware of Alan listening by the plate-cupboard. Michael heard him out and considered the tale.

  ‘You’d think we were in the Marches,’ he said at last, ‘wi Armstrongs and Johnstones at war all around us. It’s as if she’d been taken by one of the surnames to get back at another. Tib will be right distressed to hear it.’

  ‘If we were in the Marches she’d ha been better attended,’ said Gil, spooning porridge.

  ‘I’d not let Tib ride out wi one man only,’ said Michael firmly. ‘Nor the miners wouldny permit it either,’ he added.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Lady Egidia said, detaching the fat kitten from her sleeve. ‘Silky, take your baby away. Go teach it to catch mice. But Audrey was only a couple of miles from Lanark town, not away up on the moorland like you. You’d ha thought she’d be safe.’

  ‘Could it ha been some of the tinkers and the like down in Lanark for the Fair?’ Michael suggested.

  ‘That’s what her mother reckons,’ Gil said, ‘but I canny see such folk sending her husband a ransom note, more likely to be a spoken message brought by a fleet-footed laddie. And by the sound of it she’s further on than Tib. I’d not have thought they’d steal her for, well, for other than ransom, not when Lanark’s full of willing lassies.’ He bent to set his empty bowl down for the dog, who paced over to accept his tribute with dignity. ‘No, I think we’re looking at the local barons, and I hoped you might give us a hand there. Alys and I have tasks in Lanark, speaking to the Provost for one, and I’ll be needed at the quest on the servant, as finder. Sending one of the servants round all her uncles to ask for her would get us little forward, it needs to be someone who can speak to the landholder rather than the steward and gauge his reaction.’

  Michael eyed him warily.

  ‘And what’s my reason for seeking Mistress Madur? If Vary’s been told to tell no one, how come we’re seeking her?’

  ‘Tib has had no word for a week or two,’ Alys suggested. ‘It makes her anxious. You would naturally want to indulge her the now.’

  Michael coloured up.

  ‘Well, I do,’ he muttered. ‘Aye, that would work. I’m riding round her kin seeking her, since she’s not at home. And watch their eyes, I suppose, when they answer. Who d’you need to ask? Is it just her kin, or should I search wider than that? I’ll need a list of names.’

  ‘Somerville, both the Madurs,’ Gil said. ‘Gregory Vary.’

  ‘Gregory’s no like to be home,’ Michael said. ‘The most of his holdings are over in Lothian. There’s only the family lands here in Lanarkshire.’

  ‘Talk to his steward, then. And anyone else, any household that seems good. And if you can find out without asking whether there’s any business interests planned in Lanark, anything Vary would have the power to deny them, it would be a good thing. Oh, and if you or whatever man’s wi you could check the stables for a dainty jennet and a bay gelding wi a sock and a star, one of Belstane Bluebell’s, it would be a help.’

  ‘I’ll see if they ken where King Arthur’s buried and all,’ offered Michael without expression.

  Alys giggled. Before Gil could answer, small feet stamped on the stairs. Alan the steward stepped hurriedly aside as the door was flung open and Gil’s ward John McIan hurtled through it, brown and barefoot, tall for nearly four, his little red linen tunic already decorated from the morning’s activities. He was beginning to look very like his father the harper, and he had definitely grown since he had left Glasgow. Socrates padded over to lick his face, his stringy tail waving, but John pushed him away.

  ‘Daddy Gil!’ he shouted. ‘Daddy Gil! I catched a hen and he bit me!’

  Nancy, the quiet girl who was his nurse, followed him into the hall with chiding noises. John stopped, looked over his shoulder at her, then performed a very creditable bow to Lady Egidia, gabbled, ‘Good morning madam I hope I see you well,’ and flung himself at Gil without waiting for her reply. ‘Come and see! I show you which one I catched. See where he bit me?’ He exhibited a red mark on one lean arm. ‘It hurted, but Nancy put nointment and it went away.’

  ‘You mustn’t chase the hens, John,’ Gil reproved, ‘or they’ll give you no eggs for your dinner.’

  ‘No, no,’ John shook his head so that his mop of black curls danced, ‘Jackie said he never gives eggs, cos he has a black tail. I wanted his fevvers off his tail, but he bit me.’

  ‘If I tried to pull your curls out,’ Gil suggested, ‘you might try to bite me.’

  John considered this, dismissed it, and tugged at Gil’s hand.

  ‘Come and I show you which hen,’ he ordered. ‘Come now!’

  ‘I have to go to Lanark,’ Gil temporised.

  ‘Let him show you the henyard,’ said Alys. ‘It won’t take long.’

  Admiring the henyard, and particularly the cockerel’s black tail feathers, Gil found himself subjected to a volley of questions. Why did the cockerel shout like that? Why did that hen run away from the other? Why did they not fly away like the sparrows? He parried these as best he could, while the cockerel glared balefully from the peak of the henhouse and crowed defiance.

  After a while the questions died away. Gil was gazing about him, at the back of the stable buildings and the distant view of Tinto Hill, when John said, ‘Daddy Gil, what’s baron mean?’

  ‘Baron?’ he repeated, looking down at the boy. ‘It’s a man who holds land for the King.’

  ‘Oh.’ John scowled, digging with his bare toes in the dust. ‘But if it’s a lady?’

  ‘A lady can hold lands,’ Gil said. ‘Lady Egidia holds these lands. But she canny be a baron.’

  ‘But if it’s a cow?’

  ‘A cow?’ Gil realised, with a sinking feeling, what was coming. ‘It sounds the same, but it’s a different word. If a cow, or a lady for that matter, is barren, it means she has no babies.’

  John thought about this, scraping dust into a heap with the side of one high-arched foot.

  ‘Lady Gidia had babies in the olden days,’ he said after a while, ‘cos she’s your mammy, and Lady Kate’s mammy and all. Even though you’re a big man.’

  ‘That’s r
ight,’ Gil agreed.

  ‘Jackie’s big sister said. Mysie said my mammy’s a barren.’

  ‘Your own mammy’s dead,’ Gil reminded him. ‘Did she mean Mammy Alys?’

  ‘Maybe.’ The bare brown foot patted the heap of dust flat. ‘But Mammy Alys hasn’t got no babies. She’s got me.’

  ‘She does,’ Gil agreed. He hunkered down so that he was on a level with the boy. ‘She’s got you, but you were never her baby. You ken that.’

  ‘I’m her wee boy,’ stated John hopefully.

  ‘That’s right. And the best wee boy in Lanarkshire.’

  ‘Jackie says he is, his mammy said it.’

  ‘Jackie’s wrong.’ Gil rose, and lifted the child onto his shoulders. ‘Come on, we’ll go in and find Nancy.’

  Making his way among the outbuildings, past the stableyard, towards the stair of the tower-house, Gil wondered whether he should tell Alys of this conversation, and how one might prevent John from playing with Alan Forrest’s son, the only other child in the household close to his age. On the whole it seemed inadvisable—

  ‘That lady that’s got lost,’ said the little voice above his head. ‘She’s got a baby.’

  ‘No just yet,’ said Gil, ‘but she’ll get one soon.’ Little pitchers have big ears, he thought.

  ‘She never had it when she got lost,’ John stated in a different tone, ‘but she’s got it now. When you find her you’ll see it.’

  Now that, Gil recognised, he would certainly have to tell Alys.

  ‘Aye, you’re in an awkward position,’ agreed Provost Lockhart, lifting the jug again.

  A bulky, self-consequential man, he had clearly assumed his best gown to receive the Archbishop’s quaestor and his lady, and was immersed in mustard-coloured velvet turned back with green silk, and perspiring heavily. His pink face gleamed in the sunshine which flooded his private closet.

  ‘More wine, mistress? Maister?’ he suggested. He poured carefully into the little glasses and set the jug down again on the tray. At Gil’s feet Socrates watched him closely. ‘I’ll hold the quest this afternoon on the laddie your men brought me,’ the Provost went on,

  ‘gien that he’ll no last much longer. You’ll attend, seeing you’re the finder, and I can get it brought in persons unknown, easy enough. But by rights I ought to call Brosie Vary to identify the corp, it being one o his household, and by the sound o’t it would embarrass him badly. So tell me the tale again, Maister Cunningham. What was the lassie doing out and about this near her time, anyways?’

  ‘It’s all a mystery to me,’ said Gil ruefully, with a brief glance at Alys. ‘If my wife vanished, I’d be out scouring the countryside for her, no matter the threats I was sent, but Brosie seems like a man frozen, can neither act himself nor agree to action by others.’

  ‘He’s a high-strung fellow,’ said the Provost. ‘A good liner, a good lanimer-man, but high-strung. His brother’s the same, Gregory. You ken they’re twins? Seven-months’ babes, lucky to rear them, but they were aye high-strung, easy owerset. And they never got on. Not them nor the younger one, him that’s a priest. Jerome, he’s cried. The faithers o the kirk. Named for the great authorities, they are, instead of for their grandsires like a’body else, but it’s done them no good. Brosie’s a gentle enough soul, but the other two, well!’

  ‘Twins? No, I didn’t know that,’ said Gil in surprise. ‘I suppose that’s why the brother went to St Andrews and Brosie to Glasgow – to separate them.’

  ‘Aye, the brother’s the older, by half an hour they say, so they sent him to St Andrews. Wi it being the older college,’ Lockhart explained, making matters clear. Then, returning to the matter at hand, ‘Where did you say you found the laddie?’

  Gil repeated his account of the discovery, and what he had deduced at the time. Lockhart nodded as he listened, and finally said, ‘Aye, aye, that’s about what I thought. As you say, the laddie’s throat slit and his back and chest cut to ribbons, they’ve made sure he wasny able to follow them. But who were they? That’s what I’d like to ken.’

  ‘I suspect Maister Vary would like to ken it and all,’ Gil said drily. Lockhart acknowledged this with another nod. ‘The lassie’s mother reckons it was tinkers, but I’m no agreed. Tinkers would never send a message in writing.’

  ‘Aye, I’d say you’re right there. Forbye, the tinkers is all moved on. I set the constables on them the day after the Fair, and they’d ha noticed a Lanark lassie among them.’

  Gil, having met the constables, felt this argument was not convincing, but went on, ‘Who would you think might choose that spot?’

  ‘Someone that kens the lie o the land,’ said Lockhart. ‘But that doesny narrow it down much, maister. That road’s well used, any fighting man that travels it’s going to recognise the possibilities. It’s the road out o Lanark for Carluke, for Edinburgh, even Stirling.’ He hitched up the mustard velvet, which immediately began to slide down his shoulders again. ‘What’s more, it’s about the only place you could set sic a trap, atween Lanark and the lady’s mother’s house. So it doesny even rule out those that dwell south o Lanark.’ He tapped his teeth reflectively. ‘I’m agreed wi you, it’s likely no money they’re after. I could name you two or three men o the Council that could ransom their wives to more effect than Brosie Vary. And one or two that wouldny if they were asked,’ he added, chuckling.

  ‘Is there anything,’ said Alys, speaking for the first time, ‘is there anything due to come before the Council, sir, any business within the ports, that Maister Vary could support or deny?’

  Lockhart studied her for a moment, and nodded again.

  ‘Aye, I see what you’re after. There might be,’ he conceded. ‘There might be. But it’s a matter o Council business, mistress, if there is.’

  ‘There’s a lady’s safety at stake,’ said Gil, more firmly than he had intended, ‘if not her life. We need to work out who might ha lifted her, maister.’

  ‘I’ve heard o nothing definite,’ said the Provost, equally firmly. ‘I’ll enquire.’

  ‘What’s puzzling me,’ said Alys before Gil could speak, ‘is where they might have taken her. It was broad day when she was captured, they could hardly gallop through the countryside without being seen, and nobody on the Carluke bank had anything to tell. Can you suggest any place they could hide until twilight, sir?’

  Lockhart gave her an approving look.

  ‘A good thought, mistress. Let me see.’ He hitched up his gown again, and stared at the ceiling, considering. ‘Livingstone has a barn on the Newmainshill, near the Carluke road, but that’s in plain sight, hardly secret. What’s down in the glen? There’s the old mill, I suppose, though that’s no safe, it’s as like to fall round your ears and drop you in the mill-leat, or at least it was when I was a boy, it’s likely fell in by now. No shelter there.’ He sat up straighter. ‘Aye, but I mind another thing when I was a boy. Did you ken there was caves in the bank there?’

  ‘Caves?’ repeated Gil. ‘No, I never heard that.’

  ‘It’s maybe a thing Lanark laddies keeps to themsels.’ Lockhart moved the tray aside and drew a snaking line on the table-carpet with a plump pink forefinger. ‘See, if that’s the Mouse Water, and that’s the Carluke road brig, and here’s the Hamilton road brig,’ he placed his empty glass and the inkwell to mark these, ‘the caves’d be about here, atween the two roads. On the far bank, the Carluke bank, where there’s an overhang. There’s no path,’ he went on, still studying his plan, ‘you’re best going in from the Carluke road brig, cut across this bit o land here and then stay at the waterside so far’s you can.’

  ‘At this time of year, if they’ve used that, there should be tracks,’ Gil said. ‘How deep are these caves, do you mind?’

  Alys drew out her tablets and began to sketch. The Provost, watching her, shook his head.

  ‘One’s little more than a hollow in the bank, enough to keep the rain off you. The other’s deeper, and high enough to stand up in, but you’d no want to
dwell in it, though I mind,’ he grinned at the recollection, ‘I ran away from home one time. Took all my worldly goods, which was my own wee bow and my bools and my bag o knucklebanes, borrowed a pie fro the kitchen, went and slept in the cave. April, it was. Never been as cold in my life. I was quite glad my faither found me the next day, for all the skelping I had for frighting my mither. Aye, mistress,’ he leaned forward, peering at Alys’s tablets, ‘that’s about right. Maybe nearer to the Carluke road.’

  ‘Is there anyone else might have an idea,’ said Gil, ‘of who might be about to bring any matter to the Council that Brosie would have a say on? Would your burgh clerk ha heard anything, maybe?’

  ‘Dodie Ballantyne, you mean?’ said Lockhart. ‘Aye, well, you could ask him, I suppose. Mind, he’s a sticking chiel, he’ll likely no tell you anything you’re no paying for. Makes him a good custumar, but never play at Tarocco wi him.’

  * * *

  ‘Caves,’ said Alys when they had stepped out into the street, Lockhart bowing them from his door, clearly about to shed the heavy velvet gown in decent privacy. ‘But not big enough to live in or keep the girl in, I think.’

  ‘They don’t sound it,’ Gil agreed. ‘We can look on the way out of Lanark. Right now I want to speak to Maister Ballantyne, and I think you had calls to make?’ She nodded. ‘Take the dog, and Euan will attend you—’

  ‘Och, will I not be helping you make enquiries, maister?’ protested the lanky Erscheman. ‘I could be helping you question this Ballantyne.’

  ‘You’ll attend your mistress,’ said Gil firmly. ‘Did you learn anything to the purpose in the Provost’s kitchen?’

  ‘Och, well,’ said Euan, ‘it seems it’s all over the burgh now that Mistress Madur’s missing, for they were speaking o little else. Some would have it she’d run off wi a lover, another says no, she’s a decent lady. One reckons it’s the Armstrongs or the like has lifted her away for a vengeance on Maister Vary, but the rest laughed at that. Could you ever see Maister Vary doing anything that would bring a vengeance down on his head, they said.’